In his collection of essays Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food, Wendell Berry often contemplates the future of farming. He warns that the waning interest of young people in agriculture is rapidly threatening the existence of the family farm in America.

Progressive Book Club’s Maureen Scarpelli traveled to Sprout Creek Farm in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., to get their perspective on the future of farming. Sprout Creek offers educational programs for mostly young students and although they note that lately there has been more of an interest in organic food, it’s still quite a task to get young people to spend their lives farming that food.

Join us tonight at 8pm (Eastern) for another edition of Book Talk Radio with Joe Conason.  Tonight our guest is Andrew Bacevich, a retired U.S. Army Colonel, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, and author of The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

Listen live at 8pm and call in with questions at (347) 934-0465.

Bacevich identifies a profound triple crisis facing America: The economy, in remarkable disarray, can no longer be fixed by relying on expansion abroad; the government, transformed by an imperial presidency, is a democracy in form only; U.S. involvement in endless wars, driven by a deep infatuation with military power, has been a catastrophe for the body politic. These pressing problems threaten all of us, Republicans and Democrats. If the nation is to solve its predicament, it will need the revival of a distinctly American approach: the neglected tradition of realism.

Get The Limits of Power free when you join the Progressive Book Club.

Jonathan Cohn, author of Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price, and Slate’s Timothy Noah discuss.

Jonathan Tasini, author of The Audacity of Greed, gives a minute of his time to lay into corporate excess.

In a new series, Bill Kelly, president of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, explores great minds that have shaped our cultural landscape. The debut evening features legendary singer songwriter Patti Smith whose body of work encompasses poetry, fiction, essay, music, film, photography–and a new memoir, Just Kids.